Nachi's pointless rants and recollections

Well this post is long overdue.
My son will be two years old very soon and I have to admit, raising him was not as hard as everyone painted it.
I did experience tons of ups and downs, and there were arguments and fights, but nothing that would make me not want anymore kids in the future.
How did I do it?
Well it's simple really, I trusted my instincts.
Let me show you what I mean.

Breastfeeding.-
This was a no brainer for me. I've talked about this time and time again. I am very passionate about it and although I believe that breastfeeding is the best you can give your child, I understand that not everyone can/will do it and I respect that.
Well brestfeeding is such a big part of my parenting choices because everything revolves around it. The health of my child, his upbringing, our social standards. Everything roots from breastfeeding.
My mother did it, my grandmother did it, my aunts did it, almost every female in my family and extended family has breastfed all of their children. Naturally breastfeeding was something I was going to do.
This made things much easier if you ask me.
First of all, I did not need to buy any special equipment to breastfeed, all I needed were my breasts and a lot of patience.
Secondly, I could do it anywhere and anytime. No washing and preparing bottles, no carrying around a huge diaper bag filled with equipment. None of that.
It is as simple as bringing out a breast, latching on baby and relaxing when he feeds.
Most of you may not now this, but to this day I still breastfeed my son. I don't like to announce that I am breastfeeding a toddler because that will cause people to ask questions and they may become judgmental. So I kept it between my very supportive family members who understand what the benefits are. Most of them are encouraging and that helps a lot.

Co-sleeping.-
This one was obvious with a breastfeeding baby. I have to admit that at first I resisted to the idea. There is so much talk about SIDS, I was terrified that sleeping with my baby would cause his death. So, what's a mother to do? I sucked it up and woke up every two hours to breastfeed my newborn. His crib was situated right next to my bed, but I physically had to get up from my bed, bring him out to my bed, breastfeed him, put him back to sleep, then put him back in his crib. The whole ordeal took time, and before I knew it, I had to get up and do it all over again.
One night I was so tired that I decided to bring baby to bed. I pushed Ronald to the very edge of the bed, put a pillow next to him and then put baby to sleep between the pillow and I. Regardless of how safe I knew my baby was, I still had doubts, so to the internet I went. There were tons of studies showing how safe co-sleeping can be. There were so many tips on how to do it safely. What I found a lack of were studies saying that there was an increase risk of SIDS while safely co-sleeping like everyone said.
I studied this information for several days until I finally decided that I did meet the requirement to safely co-sleep with my son. I finally gave in to it, we experimented with different sleeping arrangements until we finally found one that worked for us.
My oh my, what a difference it made. Why didn't I do this from the beginning? Night feeding was so much easier when we slept together in the same bed. So many things clicked at that moment. My mother raised all three of her daughters this way, my memory finally showed me some sense and I remembered that we all shared one common bed. She had a king bed with an open sided crib where all four of us slept.
Anyway, since co-sleeping I have rarely had a bad night's sleep. I sleep the whole night through, baby would wake up and I instinctively knew to breastfeed him without fully waking up.

Discipline.-
This one was a bit more trickier.
How does one discipline their kids in a country where hitting your child is frowned upon. That's not to say that I agree with physically abusing a child, not at all, but in my country it is socially accepted to spank your kid as a form of discipline. I was spanked, my cousins were too, it is just the way it is.
I knew from the start that we would not hit a baby, infants do not know right from wrong, and smacking a baby because he is crying too much is not the way to go. This would change soon though as he got bigger. We teach our children right from wrong, we give them rules to live by and values that will carry them through adulthood. Still, sometimes they stray from what's right and they need to know when their behavior is not acceptable. Ronald and I decided that we would try to use our words as much as possible, we would give time-outs when he was old enough to understand and as he grew older we would ground him. Once in a while though spanking needed to be an open option, and we both agreed that we would either spank his bottom or slap his hand if he was going beyond his limits too many times in a row.
The first times we did it we felt awful. Hurting our child was the last thing we wanted to do, but there comes a time where we need to realize that raising a child who knows that bad actions will not go unpunished is important, hence why discipline is must. This is what works for us. We do not apologize after hitting him, we stand by our punishments and reward him when he corrects himself.

So what's my conclusion in this funny parenting style?
We do what's right for us. We threw away the rule-book, we dismissed the judgmental comments, and we followed our instincts. You may not believe it but every person has that paternal/maternal instinct that kicks in when you have a child. Some of us choose to ignore it and fear that what they do is not enough because they let themselves be guided by what others think about them. We don't let others dictate how we raise our kid. Yes we listen to the advice of our elders and fellow young parents, but their word is not our final word. We are the ones raising this kid and we want our kid to be the best he can be. He has the freedom to explore himself and his surroundings. He plays with what he wants as long as it is safe. He learned to crawl, walk, and talk at his own pace even though his grandparents were eager to push him every step of the way. He will wean himself from breatsfeeding whenever he is ready and he will continue to sleep with us for as long as we are all comfortable because it doesn't last long. Before we know it he will no longer be a baby and we will miss these days where we get to snuggle with him and where he will always ask for our help.
Enjoy your kid, they aren't babies forever, carry him as much as he wants, yes your arms will get tired, but soon he will be too heavy to do so.
I have no regrets, everything I've done for him and with him has been done to the best of my abilities. I've raised in my eyes and independent loving, healthy, strong child who will one day raise his own little children the same way.
That's something I am proud about and for that reason I feel that my parenting choices have been the best I could have chosen and I would not have it any other way.